L’Atelier des Établisseurs — Audemars Piguet

Film
Photography

Luxury

2026

Lionel Moerch as Film Director
Guillaume Mégroz as Film Director

A savoir-faire film series, shot entirely on 35mm. Because the gestures we filmed can't be redone, so we chose a medium that can't be undone either.

A brand at the edges

Audemars Piguet didn't need us to film their manufacture. They needed us to film everyone else. L'Atelier des Établisseurs is built on an idea that predates the modern watchmaking industry: exceptional objects are born from a network of independent specialists, not a single centralized institution. Audemars Piguet brings the vision, the standards, the relationships. The craftspeople bring the gestures. Our job: to capture what makes Audemars Piguet distinctly Audemars Piguet, in spaces they don't own, through hands that aren't theirs.

One obsession, many voicess

We went to them. Every artisan, filmed in their own atelier, on their own terms. Because pulling them out of their context would have killed the film. The workshop is part of the portrait: the light, the tools, the particular silence of a space built around one obsession. Each film is its own chapter, with its own rhythm, its own voice, its own visual register. Like a short story collection: distinct narratives unified by a single preoccupation. Craft. What it demands, what it protects, what it refuses to compromise. Audemars Piguet opens each film and signs it. Everything in between belongs to the artisan.

The same rules behind the cameras.

We didn't shoot on 35mm for the look. We shot on it for the discipline. Finite rolls, no playback, nothing to fix in post: the crew slowed down, sharpened up, committed. The artisans knew that feeling already, you don't get to redo an engraving or undo enamel work. For once, the camera played by the same rules as their hands. The pieces themselves are maximalist to the point of being alien, technically extreme, visually dense. The films are the opposite: quiet, unhurried, grain softening every edge. That contrast, between the extravagance of the object and the intimacy of the portrait, is what stays. Not distance. Proximity. Not perfection performed. Craft witnessed.

Same project. Different grammar.

Once the artisan films were done, we turned the camera around. Ilaria Resta (CEO), Sebastian Vivas (Heritage & Museum Director), and Nikolaas Dockx (Savoir-faire Curator). Ten minutes, one room, no script. Just a conversation map and the instruction to let go.

Let the objects talk first.

An examination table laid out with materials, historical objects, ancient and modern tools, and components from the project itself. A space designed to trigger memory and conversation rather than performance. The goal was to surface what the films couldn't: the thinking behind the gestures, the history behind the choices. Let the people who know it best just talk.